There’s something wrong with the way a summer day makes me feel. I’ve heard stories that some people tell, stories about lazy hazy days. The setting is always summer. Never has someone uttered anything about lazy, hazy days of winter, unless the person doing the uttering is in southern Florida, in which case any of their weather or seasonal opinions are meaningless. Summer days are lazy and hazy, people say, but I must admit I haven’t felt that. I’ve never experienced a lazy summer day. I’ve been lazy on a summer day, once in a great while, but it didn’t feel very good. That’s because I view summer as something that must be captured. I have no choice but to chase it down and strangle every last bit of life from it. A summer day is meant to be used, not felt. This is why I cannot enjoy summer anymore, which is a real problem at this point in my life. How can a perfect summer day at the lake not be meant for action? Use, use, use, that’s what I have been programmed to do with summer. Make Hay When The Sun Shines, my dad would say in capital letters, and there’s no doubt that no other lesson has been so deeply and tragically ingrained in my soul.
Because of this mental disorder, I must find calm in the other seasons. Lake Geneva does summer exceptionally well, we all know this, and everyone also knows that spring is the absolute worst season. Spring is nice for four days in total, and pure misery for all of the other ones. The calendar says spring lasts for three months. Three petulant months. I’d rather have another month of winter, and I really don’t even like winter that much. Today, it’s fall. And not shiny, sparkly, dazzling fall, it’s dark fall. Sepia fall. Everything misty and everything muted, fall. The Farmer’s Market is setting up across the street right now, but they know it, too. This isn’t farmer’s market fall. This is fireplace and chill, fall. This is work in an office and not feel compelled to do anything else, fall. This is the fall that allows rest. Summer spurs activity. Frantic, sunburned, motion. But on a day like this, it’s just a day. It’s cool. It’s rainy. It’s beautiful. The hushed tones suit me well, the slow motion of the piers being pulled and the leaves fluttering down to the shore path where they’ll wait for the weekend tramplers looks right by my eye. Welcome to today, welcome to real fall. I see your summer day and raise you this day. Dull and damp, overwhelmed with calm.